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The Early Word: Going Negative

By Michael Falcone July 30, 2008 9:01 amJuly 30, 2008 9:01 am

Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, who has often tried to project the image of a “happy warrior” on the campaign trail appears to be changing his tune. The Times’s Michael Cooper reports today that Mr. McCain has become “much more aggressive, and more negative” and not all Republicans like the new approach:

By doing so, Mr. McCain is clearly trying to sow doubts about his younger opponent, and bring him down a peg or two. But some Republicans worry that by going negative so early, and initiating so many of the attacks himself rather than leaving them to others, Mr. McCain risks coming across as angry or partisan in a way that could turn off some independents who have been attracted by his calls for respectful campaigning.

Indications of Mr. McCain’s evolving strategy can be found in the tone and the content of the paid advertising his campaign has been rolling out. Several of his recent television spots have attacked Senator Barack Obama directly, but have been replayed over and over on news programs rather than appearing in commercial time. The Times’s Jim Rutenberg reports that the McCain campaign’s ads – the most recent one criticized Mr. Obama for canceling a visit with American troops in Germany – are getting viewed on local television across the country.

The result, Mr. Rutenberg writes, is “a public relations coup that allowed him to show his toughest campaign advertisement of the year — one widely panned as misleading — to millions of people, largely free, through television news media hungry for political news with arresting visual imagery.”

While Mr. McCain campaigns in Colorado today, Senator Obama will spend the day talking up his economic proposals at town hall meetings in Missouri, a critical battleground state. He will hold two separate events in Springfield and Rolla, Mo.
Mr. Obama was on Capitol Hill on Wednesday where he met with Democratic lawmakers. The Wall Street Journal reports that the Illinois senator also spoke yesterday with Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke.

The Obama campaign and the Democratic National Committee announced a $20 million plan on Tuesday to court Hispanic voters, who could play a pivotal role in a number of states.

In another installment of The Times’s ongoing “Long Run” series, reporter Jodi Kantor examines the 12 years Mr. Obama spent as a part-time professor at the University of Chicago Law School and finds that during those years “he seemed as intently focused on his own political rise as on the institution itself”:

Before he outraised every other presidential primary candidate in American history, Mr. Obama marched students through the thickets of campaign finance law. Before he helped redraw his own State Senate district, making it whiter and wealthier, he taught districting as a racially fraught study in how power is secured. And before he posed what may be the ultimate test of racial equality — whether Americans will elect a black president — he led students through African-Americans’ long fight for equal status.

And besides the presidential race, the story that had all of Washington buzzing on Tuesday was the indictment of Senator Ted Stevens, Republican of Alaska, on seven felony counts. The Times’s David Johnston and David Herszenhorn have the details:

A federal grand jury in the District of Columbia charged Mr. Stevens, who is 84 and the longest-serving Republican in the Senate, with failing to report more than $250,000 in gifts, including extensive renovations to his house in Alaska, a Land Rover and home furnishings on financial disclosure forms that he filed from 1999 to 2006.

Veepstakes: The Times’s Jeff Zeleny offers a peek at Senator Obama’s vice presidential selection process. He writes that the team of vetters Mr. Obama has enlisted have been dispatched to “a number of places across the country in a secretive quest to pore over each chapter in the lives of prospective running mates, all in the hunt for anything embarrassing, distracting or otherwise problematic.”

Wow – McCain going negative…? Everyone knew he would, but then again, he promised to run a positive, respectful campaign. Obviously, McCain is going to run this however Rove wants him to, and no one, not even himself, is going to get in the way of that.

BTW – has there been a single issue/topic, statement that McCain has not lied about? (Yes – LYING! – that’s what it is called when you promise something because it sounds good, and then immediately do the exact opposite.)

One positive: going negative is always the sign on the campaign in second place… the last desperate act to win… say anything, do anything to win.

This is from the southern-politick playbook: use mud-slinging to effectively turn-off and discourage unreliable independents from showing up to vote in the general election.

Unfortunately, like most of their other “strategies” on winning and their candidate, this is out-dated and old-school. Independents have read this and other books by the GOP, “How to Win Good-ole-boy Campaigns by Confounding and Befuddling the Masses”.

It was only a matter of when Mr. McCain’s campaign would go negative, not if. Somewhere in my reading of the NYT this morning, I noticed that it was stated that McCain’s campaign has hired not one, but three of Karl Rove’s proteges. I just hope the Obama campaign manages to take the high road. I think Americans are quickly catching on to the slime and slander that has become the immoral compass on which the Republican party has been based over the past eight years.

By going negative, John McCain has performed the ultimate flip flop. How many times did he promise to run a positive, dignified campaign? At the very least, he could be truthful in going negative. Instead, he plays fast and loose with the facts and goes after Obama’s character.

McCain has destroyed his carefully cultivated image of straight talking. I have lost my respect for him.

It is no surprise that the double-talk express is riding on the low road. McCain has no new ideas to offer so his only hope is to attack Obama and hope no one notices that he, McCain, offers no hope for the future.

For four days, Sen. John McCain and his allies have accused Sen. Barack Obama of snubbing wounded soldiers by canceling a visit to a military hospital because he could not take reporters with him, despite no evidence that the charge is true.

What a great example of why campaigns get so sleazy. McCain gets millions of dollars of free advertising and sows doubt about Obama’s character through supposed News shows on television. Why wouldn’t an unscrupulous candidate do that? There seems to be no price to pay for behaving that way.

The problem is fairly simple. The ‘news’ outlets show the attack ad because it’s exciting. But then they don’t bother pointing out that the attack is a lie. Because then they would be taking sides, right? That wouldn’t be Fair and Balanced. So the unscrupulous candidate gets rewarded.

This is no small thing. It’s an environment nearly void of professional journalists willing to report the facts, even when that puts their story on one side of an argument. In this environment, the less scrupulous politician almost always wins. Without this environment, we never would have gotten President W or the Iraq War.

The fact that McCain tries to take advantage of the same dynamic that put Bush into office should really come as no surprise.

Doesn’t Time Magazine look stupid? “Sen. Obama probably thought the prayer he penned in the solitude of his King David Hotel room in Jerusalem would remain between him and the Almighty . . . after Obama left the sacred site, an orthodox seminary student went to the Wall, fished out Obama’s personal note and delivered it to Maariv newspaper, which printed the prayer . . . Obama didn’t pray for an election victory, a lottery win . . . . on the contrary, his prayer hinted at the struggle within, how Obama is seeking divine guidance to surmount the obstacles that lie ahead of him . . . Lord, protect my family and me, forgive me my sins and help me guard against pride . . . ” Now Maariv newspaper, faced with much criticism for publishing the prayer, is reporting that they were given a copy of the “prayer” by the Obama campaign before Obama stuck it in the wall. Another Israeli newspaper, Yediot Aharonot, is reporting that it, too, had a copy of the note but decided not to print it. Could Obama really have done something as cynical as give a copy of his personal prayer to a newspaper for publication before placing it in the holy wall, where it should have remained private? As a Democrat, I’d prefer to think not. Having witnessed the arrogance and duplicity of Barack Obama and his surrogates, I’m inclined to believe the newspaper. (Am I the only person who finds it hilarious that Obama prays to God to help him guard against pride, and then makes sure the entire world knows about it?)

If you read today’s NY Times top editorial on this subject, you might agree that it does not go far enough. What about McCain’s continuing befuddlement over matters of great import (confusing Sunnis and Shiites is just one example of many)?

Here is a reader comment from that page that popped out:

“In Senator McCain we have a 72-year old C-minus student with at least one major, recurring health problem. In the 46-year old Senator Obama we have an A-student at the prime of his life.
The combination of a pedestrian intellect, old age and serious medical problems is, in my view, problematic enough to disqualify Mr. McCain from competing for the world’s toughest and most powerful job. Especially when an excellent alternative is readily available.
— rmgrmg, CT”

Well I am a Democrat who voted for Hillary Clinton in the PA primary, and although I have never voted for a Republican Presidential candidate before (I did vote for Arlen Spector a Republican senator) I consider myself an Independate. I have not found any of McCain’s adds particularly offensive or negative, I may be biased because I do not like Obama and will vote for McCain, but in general, compared to traditional Republican tactics I do not find McCain’s tactics negative so far — certainly they are nothing compared to Hillary’s ads.

So the media’s in the bag for Obama. PLEASE. Endlessly repeating the baseless charges about not visiting the troops. Just like you would have endlessly repeated charges that he was “inappropriately politicizing the troops” if he went. How does it feel to be played by amateurs like Tucker Bounds etc. just so you have something to write about Obama.

The ugly truth is plain: something on the order of one half of America’s voters, consciously or subliminally, vote to express contempt for the government’s delivery on expectations and/or one or both of the political parties provided for in law by state governments under the two party system.

A vote for Mr. McCain is an epithet spat at the system. Unfortunately it flies into the wind, and will return to strike the expectorator.

What America is seeing is Barack Obama’s ads of change and offering new ideas. They are also seeing John McCain attacking Barack Obama and not offering anything in return.

The GOP should be worried, as the American public are seeing enough negatives in their lives, without the need for someone preaching more negatives and not offering anything new. While this strategy worked against Gore and Kerry, it will not work against Obama.

When Barack Obama does responds to a negative McCain ad, there is always a positive spin in the ad or the comment. It is easy to attack viciously, but it is harder to respond in a positive manner.

If John McCain goes negative so early,his ‘Straight Express’ may get derailed midway through the fall campaign.Remembering it’s the ‘undecided’ that are going to seal the fate of the candidate as the next President.

I keep seeing emails from Hillary supporters who will not vote for Obama unless Hillary is on the ticket. Well, I’m a Hillary supporter, and I won’t vote for Obama even if Hillary IS on the ticket. I won’t vote for Obama – period! His little stunt at the wall in Jerusalam was more than I can stomach. What kind of man would write a prayer to God, asking Him to help guard against pride among other things, and then give a copy of the prayer to a newspaper beforehand. And before you say that never happened, you stupid Obamabots, a second newspaper in Israel has revealed that they, too, got a copy of Obama’s private prayer before he stuck it into the holy wall in Israel. So it looks like Jesus Obama prayed to God to keep him humble, among other things, and then made sure the entire world knows about it. God help us if this arrogant son of a youknowwhat becomes president.

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